


Displacement: Or, A Watery Problem Solved

by ariadnes_string



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Bathtubs, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3344759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson put the whiskey glass on floor beside him, and leant his head back against the tub, enjoying the silence.  No rapid-fire questions, no dizzying leaps of logic: peace.</p><p>It did not last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Displacement: Or, A Watery Problem Solved

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Вытеснение, или Как решить проблему с водой](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115299) by [Hedwig221b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedwig221b/pseuds/Hedwig221b)



> Written for come_at_once 2015, for mistyzeo's prompt: _there ain't room for the two of us_.

The water was hot, the lamp was dimmed, the room was quiet, and Watson had a glass of whiskey in his hand. He sighed with contentment. A bath was just what the doctor ordered, even (especially) if the doctor was himself.

They’d spent a long day tracking a pair of art thieves through the streets of London, only to reach a dead end at the East India docks. It was clear that the scoundrels had absconded—but how, and to where? Holmes had insisted on interviewing every shipping company, going through every set of books. But nothing had come of it except a gradual deterioration of Holmes’ mood, and a gradual increase in the severity of Watson’s headache.

The water, wondrously, began to leach the aches from his bones. He put the whiskey glass on floor beside him, and leant his head back against the tub, enjoying the silence. No rapid-fire questions, no dizzying leaps of logic: peace.

It did not last.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Holmes, opening the door with a decisive click.

“No,” said Watson. “No thinking. Not in here. All I ask—“

Holmes paid him no mind. He stalked to far corner of the room, then made a swift about-face and approached the tub. “About the last office we visited. Baedecker? Zaydecker? Doesn’t matter.”

“—is one hour—one half hour—of peace and—”

“Something about his books has been puzzling me.”

“—quiet. I’m bloody well knackered, Holmes, and I think I deserve that much.” 

“Don’t be querulous, my dear; it doesn’t suit you. Now, Haydecker: it’s the weights he assigned to his cargo that concern me. The load—“

“The load?” Holmes was behind him now, and water sloshed as Watson craned his neck to follow his progress, drawn in despite his best efforts. “Was it too light?”

“No.” Holmes was facing him again, gazing pointedly into the tub. “Too heavy.”

Watson instinctively drew his knees together.

“His shipping crates were quite small. About the size of this tub, in fact.” Holmes drew a speculative finger along the porcelain rim. Then he began to undo his cravat.

“What're you doing?”

Holmes had stripped to the waist with impressive alacrity. He began to undo his trouser buttons. “Testing a theory.”

“Oh no. No, no, no, no, no,” Watson wailed, as Holmes’ trousers slid to the floor. “There’s not enough room in here for both of us.”

“Exactly the theory I plan to test.” Holmes, naked as a jaybird, regarded him sternly. “Now budge up.”

In the course of their co-inhabitance, Baker Street had acquired a few luxuries, but an ample tub was not among them. Watson had fit into the present specimen quite nicely to begin with, albeit without room to stretch his legs to their full length. For one person, it was perfectly adequate. For two it was, well, it was preposterous.

But Holmes really was remarkably agile, when he set his mind to it. He clambered in, the neatness of his limbs, the curve of his arse, distracting Watson from his irritation.

“Oi! Watch your elbows, will you?” said Watson, but mostly to remind Holmes that he was trespassing on a man’s hard-earned privacy.

“My apologies. But I think if you move your left foot a touch to the right we’ll be better off. That’s it.”

Watson harrumphed, but for form’s sake only. He could never resist Holmes for long.

“Now, now, my dear,” Holmes chided. “For science. That’s it. Shift your right hip towards me. A bit more. Ah, there were are. Just as I suspected.”

Holmes regarded him triumphantly from the opposite end of the tub. It was awkward and uncomfortable, their limbs were entwined to a degree of intimacy Watson had never contemplated outside the bedroom, but fit together in the bath, they surely did.

“We have, my friend, been tricked,” Holmes pronounced.

And indeed, Watson felt very much as if he’d been tricked, though not, perhaps, by the erstwhile art thieves. The pleasures of the flesh, which had been the farthest thing from his mind when he entered the bath, were now, with Holmes’ left ankle brushing his groin, beginning to seem appealing.

“The question,” Holmes said. “Is whether two men could maintain such a position, in such a confined space, all the way to Calais?”

“To Calais?” Watson heard his own voice grow hoarse, felt his face flush with more than the heat of the water.

“To Calais. Without moving.”

“Without moving.” 

They hung fire a few moments, Holmes very still indeed. Then Watson could stand it no longer. He leaned forward and kissed Holmes. His elbow banged into the side of the tub, and his bad leg protested, but it was worth it to have his lips on Holmes’ mouth, to feel the answering passion there.

“No, you’re quite right,” Holmes gasped when they broke for air. “No one could remain motionless under such conditions.”

He closed his hand around Watson’s cock, which was already so stiff it poked its sightless eye above the water. The bath made Holmes’ strokes almost frictionless, but they were so sure, so sweet, that they brought Watson to the brink almost immediately.

“But I forget, my dear,” Holmes said, taking his hand away. “You are tired and want no distractions.”

“Bastard,” Watson grunted. He grabbed Holmes’ shoulder. “Don’t you dare stop.”

And Holmes obliged.

The violence of Watson’s climax was such that he imagined tiny waves overflowing the sides of their tub. 

Afterwards, the floor around the tub was slick with the water displaced by their activities. Even Watson’s forgotten glass of whiskey had been overturned.

“Mrs. Hudson will have our heads,” he noted ruefully.

“Never mind about her,” said Holmes. “We must all sacrifice for the science of deduction.”


End file.
